Kick-off
Ok, I might be a silly Swede, but is a lease with the ability to just quit leasing when you lose your job really "a commitment"?
Hyundai
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I think you would need a car more so when you're not working, so you can find work, and be able to get to work once you get a job!
A real commitment would be to tell people: We'll postpone your payments for up to 3 (or 6) months, if you can prove you aren't working.
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PermalinkFeels really irresponsible to me. Isn't the credit-giving what put ya'll in debt in the first place? Try making the money before using it for once.
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PermalinkUnfortunately, as I'm sure you know, this country (USA) has lots and lots of spaces between major concentrations of population (i.e. cities). Unless you are willing to pay the higher rates for quality city housing, or live close enough to public transit, you need a vehicle. To buy stuff, unless you live in the city, you need a car to go to the malls and shopping outlets. Cars break down, and you need newer and better cars to get around. Plus cars are WAY too expensive - $33,000+ (US) for a Hundyai!!! - $45,000+ for a Ford Flex!!! (and it's uggh-ley!). Personally, I need a new car, but I can't put the money together for it at the moment. My Corolla has a quarter million miles on it (and has been paid-off for years). It's just starting to go bad. The really bad thing is the leases. After 5-7 years of paying for a car, they take it away from you, and then ask you for more money if you put too many miles on it.
Being in debt isn't the problem. Being able to pay the debt is!
The prices of houses skyrocketed, mostly because of decreased credit rates, and the ease of getting credit. But the prices are too high for most people. (I know someone who bought a small 4 bedroom house three years ago, with about 30 feet of distance between himself and his neighbors for $425,000! He was making $73,000/year at the time. After taxes, that's about $49,000/year. Plus, his wife did not work, and they have 2 kids. How can you buy a house that is 10 times more than your take-home salary?!?! (Also, a lot of people got those ARMs [Adjustable Rate Mortgages], which just about guaranteed that you couldn't pay your monthly mortgage five years later).
My brother took advantage of the easy mortgages, and a few years after he bought his primary home, he bought a vacation/rental property in Florida, then 2 more houses in Pennsylvania. He fixed them all, and then sold one of them (for a too small profit), and is still renting out one of them. He's upside down on ALL of the mortgages now, less so on the original home than the others. He tried re-negotiating his main mortgage, and they were talking about a 40 year mortgage! I don't think he'll be working into his 80's! (They didn't give him what he wanted, but they did change the rate and length to something relatively reasonable).
Too much money was given to too many people who had/have no possibility of paying the loans back! This is the crux of the problem.
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